PhysioProf tagged me using his Feministe guest blogger bully-pulpit. The idea is to identify the five most embarrassing tracks on your iPod. (Since I use the iTunes library on my iBook more than my iPod, that’s what I used.)
This was harder than it might have been. It turns out, when it comes to my musical tastes, I have very little shame.
Author Archives: admin
The pros and cons of screening mammography: reading my ‘patient instructions’.
Connected to my last post (and anticipated by my razor-sharp commenters), in this post I want to look at the pros and cons of routine screening mammography in women under age 50, drawing on the discussion of this subject in the multi-page “patient instructions” document I received from my primary care physician.
The aim of screening mammography is to get information about what’s going on in the breast tissue, detecting changes that are not apparent to the eye or to the touch. If some of these changes are the starts of cancer, the thought is that finding them sooner can only be better, allowing more time for treatments that remove the cancer or that slow its grown and arrest its spread to other parts of the body.
Having more information earlier, you’d figure, is bound to save lives. (Whether this conclusion is supported by the data is harder to discern, as Orac makes clear in this discussion of relevant research.)
But the information comes at a cost. Not only do mammograms require fancy (and expensive) equipment to capture the images, well-trained technicians to work with the patient to get the images, and well-trained physicians to interpret the images, but they expose the patient whose breasts are being imaged to low dose X-rays. Exposure to this sort of ionizing radiation can increase your risk of cancer.
So, right off the bat, it makes sense to have a screening policy that gets you the most useful information for the least risk and cost. Here’s how the patient information I was given lays out the thinking behind the risk/benefit balance my medical group favors:
Blogging my mammogram.
At the urging of my colleague Abel, who liveblogged his own vasectomy, I’m documenting my first mammogram. Given that I had pretty much no idea what to expect going into this, I’m hopeful that this post will demystify the experience a little for those who know they probably should get mammograms but have been putting it off.
Let me preface this by saying that there was no special reason that my primary care physician ordered a mammogram for me aside from my being 40. As such, there’s no special cause to be worried for my health as I wait for the results.
Want to hang out in Manhattan on August 9?
Longtime readers may remember that last August saw a semi-spontaneous confluence of ScienceBlogs bloggers in New York City.
Apparently, we are nothing if not creatures of habit. This August, we are as salmon swimming upstream to return to our spawning grounds. (Well, except that most of us are not planning on spawning, and all of us plan on surviving the weekend.)
Anyway, this time around, Seed is planning on hosting a bloggers and readers meet-up, Saturday August 9, probably around 3:00 PM, in a location to be announced (but one that is likely to have air conditioning). In addition to the opportunity to meet some of your favorite bloggers in real life, this gathering also promises swag and snacks.
In order to make sure there’s enough room/food/swag, the folks at Seed are trying to get a rough guess as to how many of you all might turn up for such an event. If you think there’s a non-zero probability that you’d attend, please leave a comment (with your estimated probability of joining us).
I’ll be there, and I’d be thrilled to meet some of you all in three dimensions.
New experimental digs
… sometimes require hard work, at least when the experimental digs are raised garden beds. Seriously, when was the last time you moved 14.5 cubic yards of topsoil and compost? (Not that I did it all myself, of course. My better half did quite a bit of it, and the Free-Ride offspring even pitched in.)
Pictures of the end result of 4 days of dirt-moving labor:
Saturday Sprog Blogging: fish behavior.
[Pardon the delay!]
Watching the fish tank in the pediatrician’s waiting room:
Younger offspring: Those fish are playing tag!
Dr. Free-Ride: It kind of looks like tag, doesn’t it?
Younger offspring: Except since they don’t have hands to touch each other, I think they’re using their mouths.
Minor epiphany about framing.
In the aftermath of Sizzle Tuesday, Orac wrote a post posing a challenge to the science communicators:
How would you deal with antivaccinationism? What “frames” would you use to combat the likes of Jenny McCarthy?
In the comments on Orac’s post, Matthew C. Nisbet turned up:
The anti-vaccine movement is a perfect issue to examine how framing has shaped communication dynamics and public opinion; and how various groups have brought framing strategies to bear in the policy debate.
I personally haven’t had time to do research on the topic. …
To understand and to make recommendations about the anti-vaccine movement, you would need to conduct polling, focus groups, and do an analysis of media coverage.
That’s the point I’ve made about framing from the beginning. It involves taking a scientific and research-based approach to science communication. Do the research, combine it with an understanding of past studies on science communication, and then plot a strategy.
Unfortunately too many bloggers think framing is something you whip up on the back of an envelope, and in the process they have little concept of what a frame might be, or understand the research in the area.
And finally, I think, I came to understand a crucial way in which the pro-framing camp and the “framing skeptics” have been talking past each other.
This week, Friday Sprog Blogging …
… is postponed until Saturday. I have to get final grades for my summer seminar computed and posted by midnight.
With luck, I’ll have this week’s conversation up by Saturday morning. It’ll be like Saturday morning cartoons, but with fewer commercials for Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs (or whatever breakfast cereal the kids with cool moms are eating these days).
To tide you over, a few animal drawings from the younger Free-Ride offspring:
What kind of impact do we really have?
There’s a question I’ve been thinking about intermittently (over the course of several years) that I thought I’d lay out here, on the theory that you all have a track record of sharing smart and insightful things (including related questions of your own) in the comments.
One of the things that potentially makes a human life good (at least, from the point of view of the person living it) is setting aims and directing one’s efforts toward meeting those aims. For many people, these aims run along the lines of making the world a better place for others in some particular way – by reducing suffering, increasing cooperation, building knowledge, etc.
Some people are in situations where they can work towards their goals as part of their day jobs. Other people may find themselves in circumstances where serious work towards their goals can only be conducted on their own time (assuming they can find the discretionary time in which to pursue these goals).
So here’s the question:
All that’s left standing between me and my sabbatical.
I’m on sabbatical for academic year 2008-2009. This being summer, you’d think I’d consider the sabbatical officially begun.
Not quite. But I’m getting closer. All that remains: